Yes, Killing Innocent People Is Kind of Frowned Upon, But What’s the Alternative?

Today, in passing, I just want to draw attention to another bizarre editorial choice by that outlet. See to my right.

Joshua Foust is their go to write for drone coverage. And in fact he is many people’s go to guy for that topic. I had read some criticism of him, somewhere, at some point, but which I can no longer find, alleging that he had strong ties to the defense industry and thus his analysis was perniciously skewed.

Whether or not that is the case, I find him on average to be rather middle of the road on the use of drones abroad and at home. However, the sub-heading for the front-page story took me by surprise.

“Yes, they’re unpopular. What’s the alternative?”

What?! We’re not talking about something like the the debt here. “Yes, sequestration is unpopular. What’s the alternative?” the sub-heading puts forth the implicit argument that killing people is a problem because it’s unpopular. Which is sick.

This piece of Foust’s in particular doesn’t get much better from there. He takes a look at the “pros and cons” of drone use, but from the unexamined position that what they are used to achieve, for instance killing terrorists and “militants,” is unquestionably necessary, and thus it’s just a question of whether the drones are the best or only way to achieve this.

Working from that constrained and toxic framework, it’s not wonder that the piece and its title are able to address the question of the incidental but inexcusable killing of men, women, and children from such a cold and sociopathic position.

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I write about comics, video games and American politics. I fear death above all things. Just below that is waking up in the morning to go to work. You can follow me on Twitter at @ethangach or at my blog, gamingvulture.tumblr.com. And though my opinions aren’t for hire, my virtue is.

The alternative? The alternative is that we accept the possibility that ending drone strikes may (or may not, if ceasing drone strikes and foreign wars decreases terrorist recruitment) marginally increase the threat of terrorism. The alternative is that we think seriously about whether a hypothetical American life really outweighs an innocent life overseas.

Sadly, nobody seems interested in doing that. I can actually see where this comes from: I’m current in a graduate-level International Affairs programs, and the assumptions underlying the piece are the same one’s we’re taught. A core assumed objective of foreign policy is to maximize domestic security. One of the rare times we discussed ethics in a class, I was taught that the security of the state was the primary moral imperative of a state’s foreign policy, because if there were no states, everyone would be far worse off (sort of a combination of Hobbes and the “go to Somalia if you don’t like it” argument). Thus, if you believe that killing off more members of Al Qaeda makes America safer, the only question is “how should we do it?”, not “should we do it?”. It’s perfectly plausible that, within government circles, this kind of thinking is so ingrained that they don’t even think about “lives of people who aren’t citizens or residents” as anything other than a secondary or tertiary objective, something to try to minimize provided all other objectives (e.g., “eliminate the ability to Al-Qaeda to function through elimination of its personnel”) have been achieved.Report

“The alternative is that we think seriously about whether a hypothetical American life really outweighs an innocent life overseas”

You should actually prefer the system be that way. Totes serious.

If American (or anyone else’s) foreign policy is predicated on the assumption that every person in the world has equal standing in the eyes of the American government, then the logical conclusion is the American government should do everything to ensure the rights and privileges of anyone in the world are equalized.

In other words, it would no longer be enough to say ‘let’s stop drone strikes in Warizistan’ – which one can easily justify even under a “Americans first” policy. The necessary condition would be ‘let’s make sure they have Obamacare and are recognizing gay marriage in Warizistan’ – which is going to take a whole lot more drone strikes.Report

I’m quite willing to deal with sins of commission first, and deal with the sins of omission in order of priority. The latter means that we focus on saving lives in places where we can do so without taking lives; once all of those potential lives are saved, and nobody is dying of hunger or preventable disease in places that aren’t conflict zones, we can discuss the ethics of humanitarian intervention.

I don’t see how “don’t kill innocents in Waziristan” logically leads to “kill more innocents in Waziristan so we can enforce our policies on them”. There are plenty of ways to save non-American lives that don’t require military action.Report

And if the moral imperative to do something affirmative to help people in the name of liberal social justice was not there, we would not have a drug war. A sin of commission right here on US citizens and residents.

(Yes, the drug war has a mostly a conservative impetus. But it’s the liberal that so scared that someone somewhere may make a profit of a drug transaction that provides the margin of the status quo these days)Report

You have to understand that this is the sick twisted nation of America you’re talking about. The alternative is slow torture.

As a nation of cowardly sadistic bully-worshipers, Americans dote on torture and genocide. Nothing brings an American to his feet with his hand over his heart reciting the pledge of allegiance more than the sight of a strapping 250-pound man beating up a defenseless child. Your typical Americano lacks the courage to rape an underage girl, but will eagerly hold her down for someone else to rape. This is the nation, after all, built on the genocide of the native American indian, a nation that started using waterboarding not in the 1970s in Vietnam but in 1902 during the Philippine campaign (where waterboarding was known joshingly as “the water cure”).Report

It's funny how browsers I think are a thing (specifically Vivaldi and Brave) don't even register on this list. Goes to show my techie bubble.

Browsers used to have better names. Netscape was brilliant. What the heck is a Firefox? (It's "Firebird" with IP considerations is what it is.) Chrome? Edge? Edge? Come on.

It's amazing how quickly Chrome accomplished what Firefox never did. It just goes to show the power of corporate muscle. When Google announced they were creating a browser I thought it was kind of dumb. I was wrong.

People say Firefox is better than Chrome now but I just can't get into the groove of it. Chrome doesn't work right on one of my computers and I use Firefox on it. it's passable, but I wish Chrome worked on it.

With Internet Explorer being replaced by Edge and Edge being Chrome-based, that means may be looking at 3 of the top 5 and 85% of desktop browsing occurring through Chromium browsers. That's concerning.

The ship's presence, he speculated, might have been related to the testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile.

Did Trump tweet anything about this, you ask?

The United States is learning much from the failed missile explosion in Russia. We have similar, though more advanced, technology. The Russian “Skyfall” explosion has people worried about the air around the facility, and far beyond. Not good!

As some of you know, I lost my father two weeks ago. My mother called me that Friday afternoon and said, in not such direct words, that “you better try to get up here if you can.”

I did, but I was too late. But in the aftermath of it, it was good to be there. My mother and I ate together for two weeks (my brother and his family are coming in later, such are the vagaries of scheduling bereavement leave in a government agency). We cooked some favorite things. My mom roasted a chicken and then laughed ruefully and said “I guess it’ll be harder to use a whole one up now” and the day after that, we made a favorite chicken enchilada recipe given us by a former minister of her church who had lived in the Southwest. And she baked a favorite cake of ours (my father was diabetic and we had to be careful about sweets in the house, and also baking was hard while he was so unwell). I think it helped, maybe?

There’s a German word, Kummerspeck, which literally means “Grief-bacon” and is used to refer to the weight you put on while grieving. I had scoffed at that before because the more minor griefs (eg., breakups) I had suffered made me NOT want to eat…..but I know I’ve put on a couple pounds in the last two weeks and will have to explain to my doctor when I go in for my checkup on Tuesday….

And people brought in food – lasagna, and bread, and other things.

And we went out to eat lunch a couple times; before my father’s health failed so much going out to restaurants was a favorite thing and my mom hadn’t been able to do it, really, for six months or more while he was needing her care.

When I spoke to her today after I got home, she noted that even though she had told the ‘church ladies’ who do bereavement lunches she didn’t want them to go to the trouble for the memorial service this fall (we have some people with some specific dietary concerns coming), someone did call her back and suggest a dessert-and-coffee reception before the service and I urged her to have them do that – I have fixed things many times for funeral lunches at my own church and it feels very much like it’s one kindness I can do for the family, and having a piece of cake or a few cookies may make small talk easier in a time when it’s going to be hard.

I admit I always rolled my eyes over the “how to relate to your weird dumb relative who isn’t like you” pieces, or, worse, the “you should refuse to spend time with them or try to harangue them into your viewpoint over the Thanksgiving table” pieces, because my family has a lot of….different…..people in it, and we’ve always managed. You talk about other stuff, that’s all. You talk about how a favorite team is doing or the funny things someone’s kids are doing or you share memories….

Jeffrey Epstein, the millionaire financier and accused sex trafficker, is dead by suicide, according to three officials familiar with the matter.

The officials told NBC News he was found at 7:30 a.m. ET at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York and that he hanged himself.

Epstein accuser claims she was ordered to have sex with prominent men

He was transported Saturday morning from the Metropolitan Correctional Center to a hospital in Lower Manhattan. Upon arrival, he was in cardiac arrest, people familiar with the matter say.

Epstein, 66, was being held on federal sex trafficking charges.

He was arrested July 6 in Teterboro, New Jersey, as he returned from Paris on a private jet.

He had pleaded not guilty and was denied bail.

The indictment on his case showed that he sought out minors, some as young as 14, from at least 2002 through 2005 and paying them hundreds of dollars in cash for sex at either his Manhattan townhouse or his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, federal prosecutors revealed last month.

Epstein was charged with one count of sex trafficking conspiracy and one count of sex trafficking. He faced up to 45 years in prison if found guilty.